Anomalous diffraction by cold atoms

Frank Strauch, V. Gomer, Harald Schadwinkel +3 more

Artur Mikhailovich Ishkhanyan, Khachatur Aghavardovich Khachatryan

S. C. Bell, David V. Sheludko, Hua Yu +2 more

We have demonstrated off-resonant imaging of a cold atom cloud, computationally extracting the atomic column density map from a diffraction pattern. We are developing the technique to imaging of excited-state atoms.

E. Giacobino, Jean-Michel Courty, Claude Fabre +2 more

Eli Barkai, Erez Aghion, David A. Kessler

Researchers develop a new theory to characterize anomalous spatial diffusion of an ensemble of cold ${}^{87}$Rb atoms and single ${}^{24}$Mg${}^{+}$ ions in optical lattices. The theory shows how a transition from regular to anomalous diffusion, with a continuous range of anomalous scaling, is obtained with the tuning of the laser intensity.

Yin Hung, Bradley Schuller, John T. Giblin +1 more

When cold atoms approach a periodically magnetized surface, they are scattered by the effective repulsive potential $U(x,y)={\ensuremath{\mu}}_{B}{m}_{F}gB(x,y)$. If the period $a$ of the magnetized surface is larger than the de Broglie wavelength $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ of the atoms, the atoms are diffracted. We have developed a method for calculating the location and intensity of the diffraction peaks using formal scattering theory. We solve the exact two-dimensional Schr\"odinger equation with the finite element method and calculate the scattering amplitude $f(\ensuremath{\phi})$ using the integral formula; a plot of $\ensuremath{\mid}f(\ensuremath{\phi}){\ensuremath{\mid}}^{2}$ provides a visualization of the diffraction pattern. By varying the experimental parameters within a realistic range, we predict the optimal conditions for observing atom diffraction.